The present invention relates to an elevator installation with hoistway doors laterally displaceable beyond the width of the hoistway and/or partially displaceable into the hoistway wall.
The ever increasing price and scarcity of building land necessitate high-density building with multiple stories. If vertical transportation is to be handled by an elevator installation, there is also generally little space available for the hoistway of the elevator installation. This is the starting point for deciding on the size of the elevator car and the appropriate type of elevator. When selecting the car there is frequently an associated wish or specification for the dimensions of the openings for the car or entrance to be as large as possible. Coupled with this, moreover, is the selection of car doors and hoistway doors and the overtravel distance at the side of the car required for the lateral displacement of the door panels to open the doors. The overtravel is usually less than the width of the door panels used. For a given width of car opening, the overtravel distance required defines the minimum distance of the side walls of the hoistway from each other, i.e. the hoistway width.
For preference, hoistway doors are regularly provided with two or four door panels. A feature of telescopic doors is that the length of lateral overtravel they require is small in relation to the width of the car entrance opening to be closed. The telescopic doors are, as known for example from the European patent document 0 606 508 A1, fitted as a hoistway door assembly into an opening for hoistway doors provided in the hoistway wall.
Hitherto, the hoistway door assembly has comprised a door frame which has two side jambs joined above by a transverse element, the head jamb, and below by a sill plate, and which is anchored by several fastening elements into the hoistway wall and landing floor. Fastened to the head jamb is the motive mechanism of the hoistway doors, which itself projects into the hoistway between the hoistway wall and car door in the same way as the sill plate and door panels. Furthermore, by means of the adjustable fastening elements of the hoistway door assembly, dimensional inaccuracies in the building structure are adapted to the tight dimensional specifications of the elevator installation. Especially with respect to a positionally exact alignment of the hoistway doors themselves, and relative to the car doors on each stopping floor, this has so far been associated with great effort. The adjustment range requires additional building space for the hoistway.
This total amount of hoistway space which is taken up by the parts of the hoistway door either increases the building costs or decreases the entrance area in front of the hoistway door on each landing, which for aesthetic and safety reasons should be made as spacious as possible.
The present invention concerns an elevator hoistway door assembly in the form of a hoistway wall module. An objective of the present invention is to propose an elevator which is simple to install and has improved utilization of building space by comparison with the installations described above.
According to the present invention, this objective is achieved by an elevator installation with a hoistway door which is particularly distinguished by the door panel, or the door panels, being arranged so as to be laterally displaceable beyond the width of the hoistway, and/or the door panel, or door panels, being at least partially displaceable into the hoistway wall.
According to the present invention, the available building space is optimally utilized. To increase traffic capacity, better utilization of the cross-sectional surface of the hoistway is achieved because components of the hoistway door assembly hitherto arranged in the hoistway space, as the sill plate, the door panels, and their motive mechanism, are at least partially integrated into other parts of the building structure which are necessary and present, such as for example the hoistway wall, the adjacent hoistway wall, or areas of the building structure which are integrated into the entrance area.
Because of this, and leaving the car unchanged, the elevator hoistway can be constructed narrower since the door panel(s) are at least partially laterally displaceable beyond the dimensional width of the hoistway, and the lateral hoistway door overtravel no longer represents a dimensional and constructional restriction. Elimination according to the present invention of the lateral door over travel also creates the possibility of replacing telescopic doors having two, three, or four panels, used hitherto for reasons of reducing the hoistway space, by a hoistway door with only one correspondingly wide door panel as standard and largely irrespective of the size of the car opening. This changeover to a constructionally more simple and less expensive hoistway door according to the invention is also advantageous in that it can be built into significantly less depth. According to the present invention the entrance threshold to be passed through when entering and leaving the car formed by the car door and hoistway door being held open can be constructed narrower. As well as this aesthetic enhancement of the hoistway door, installation of the hoistway doors is simpler overall. By comparison with the conventionally used narrow door panels of telescopic doors, the single, wide door panel can be aligned in its installed position in less time, whereas its dimensional accuracy lasts longer.
As a second means of solution according to the present invention, the door panel, or door panels, of the hoistway door assembly are arranged to be at least partially displaceable into the hoistway wall either in addition to, or as an alternative to, enlargement of the lateral overtravel. With the solution provided by the present invention, the large depth of building occupied hitherto by the parts of the hoistway door assembly built into the hoistway can be used for a car with larger dimensions, and/or the dimensions of the hoistway can be reduced by the amount saved.
In a further development of the present invention the car doors are also displaceable beyond the width of the hoistway, and the lateral boundaries of the hoistway have corresponding recesses formed over the entire hoisting travel of the elevator car. Running in each of these vertical grooves are the parts of the car door which project at the sides, as for example the car door sill plate and door drive. Here too, building space in the hoistway is compensated by the hoistway wall.
According to a preferred further development of the present invention, the door frame of the hoistway door assembly is made flat and wide and covers the elevator hoistway beyond the width of the hoistway up to the building structure. This so-called hoistway wall module is advantageously located and anchored between the individual stories. This makes it possible to dispense with a hoistway wall formed by the building. The hoistway wall module serves as a hoistway construction, and at the same time as a fastening construction for the hoistway door mountings. The hoistway wall module can be pre-assembled; i.e. transported to the job site with integrated hoistway door mountings. At the job site it is easy to install it in one piece and align it relative to the elevator car.
According to a preferred embodiment, the entire door assembly, meaning the hoistway wall module with integral hoistway door, is placed on the landing wall adjacent to the hoistway on both sides and covers the hoistway door opening. The hoistway wall module stands completely in the area of the landing floor and replaces a hoistway wall with restricted door cutouts usually provided in the building. If conditions in the building are suitable, hoistway door panels of any width can be used, in the extreme case having the width of the car cutout opening.
The hoistway wall module can be constructed either as a single-piece prefabricated construction of shaped metal sheets, or of wooden or plastic materials or combinations thereof. However, it can also take the form of a metal construction built up from several assemblies.
Irrespective of the form of construction, the hoistway doors are completely pre-assembled, ready to function, and fastened to the hoistway wall module. The flat, wide, and self-supporting construction of the hoistway door module creates the precondition for a construction with significantly less building depth relative to a landing wall. The large hoistway door made possible by elimination of the lateral boundary affords advantageous building space relative to the depth of the hoistway module; there is no longer a telescopic door with door panels which slide over each other.
The present invention is developed further in that two or more of the hoistway wall modules according to the invention are arranged vertically on top of each other into an essentially self-supporting hoistway wall. This modularly constructed hoistway wall rests on a hoistway pit module that serves as a foundation for hoistway and elevator. Reference points defined in the hoistway pit module determine the exact position of the first hoistway wall module, on top of which further hoistway wall modules can be easily aligned with positional accuracy. Overall, the modularly constructed hoistway wall according to the invention is largely independent of the building structure, and forms an adjustably dimensioned connecting element between the building structure and the elevator installation to compensate the dimensional tolerances.
In principle, as a self-supporting construction, the modular hoistway wall is preferably connected to the respective landing floor by only two one-dimensional fastening devices per hoistway wall module. In an embodiment for multistoried building structures, provision is made for supporting weight forces of the hoistway wall modules on the landing floors of the individual stories by means of suitable fastening elements. In both variant embodiments of the modular hoistway wall, lateral anchor fastenings in the hoistway wall can be dispensed with, which significantly counteracts sound from the motive mechanism of the door being structurally borne into the building structure.
It is advantageous for both fastening devices to be situated exclusively in the middle area of the hoistway door cutout because it is then easy to install them from the landing floor. Furthermore, this position is favorable for aligning the fastening devices as reference points and mountings when aligning the hoistway wall modules exactly plumb and aligned with the hoistway pit module by means of a laser adjustment device that in itself is known.